


Una Furtiva Lagrima

by Bogglocity



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Ficlet Collection, Fluff and Angst, No Smut, but lotsa smooches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2019-09-02 11:04:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16785697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bogglocity/pseuds/Bogglocity
Summary: Collection of E/C vignettes. No chronology or specific universe. Garden of fluff and angst.





	1. Waking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik is certain he is dead; everything is too sweet to be otherwise. References to illness.

The voice that rouses Erik from his numb and dreamless state is crystalline. It is clear but he can’t quite make out the words as they scatter like rainbows from gemstone facets in the blackened caverns of his skull. It is familiar, but he can’t see the form of it, can’t trace the cut of it. It hangs onto a very specific thread of memory but he can’t call upon it. He tries, he tries, he tries, but his mind feels just as leaden and impossible to move as his limbs. And so he lets them all lay wherever it is they lay, unable to feel whatever cushion is beneath them or if there is one there at all.

He must be dead.

He has a memory, or rather a notion, that there was something to make him think this. Some distant echo of temperatures, of bitterness on his tongue, of rattling aches in his chest. He doesn’t detect any of them now. He doesn’t detect anything at all, in fact, save that voice and its hand-polished smoothness.

Not only a voice, but a voice in song. The words surround him in breezes of sweet lavender, of honeyed chamomile and warming sage, and he thinks what he is laying on must be a field of wildflowers. The blossoms cradle his head, lift him from the hard soil and pillow his limbs. He has never felt a softer bed, never breathed a sweeter scent, never heard a purer song.

If this is death, then the universe and its machinations are far kinder than he ever gave them credit. An eternity in a blissful blackness, with faint auras of a tender contentedness warming what had already been death-cold skin… It is a soft eternity indeed, an unexpected one. There are worse places to be. Perhaps there is no hell after all, if he of all people can be given the grace to lay his head here. Perhaps it is simply rest. Soothing, blessed rest.

A void, with nothing to echo save the sound of that ever-singing voice in his head.

There is a warmth on his forehead now—does he have a forehead? A warmth where his forehead might be, might have been, and the song becomes a formless susurration. The warmth travels, down along what might have been his cheek, his jaw, his neck. He wants to turn into the melting caress, to kiss whatever it is, to whisper his thanks, but what might have been his muscles don’t obey. He is left immobile, but even in that he can’t find complaint as the ghosts of fingertips brush what was once his temple. Somehow, in his nonexistent throat, he manages the quietest of purrs.

“ _Erik?_ ”

His name cuts through the haze like a sunbeam to the forest floor, and he knows that voice now, could recognize its water-clear perfection anywhere. It sends a familiar shiver through him, a renewed sense of calm that blooms in his chest with those same petals of chamomile and buds of lavender. He isn’t sure if it is seconds or hours later when he hums a response, trying to urge more, his name again, another song.

He gets neither. In their stead, something frigid replaces the delicate warmth at his temple, shooting shards of ice into the marrow of his bones. He gasps in a breath and all at once, feeling and weight and movement return to his arms and legs. He wishes they hadn’t because with them comes an awful, creaking ache in all of his joints. It spreads to just behind his eyes, where a toothy light slips between his eyelids to gnaw through what had just been that wonderful, blanketing darkness.

He shifts and the wildflowers become a just-too-warm bed and the stickiness of fever-licked skin. He hadn’t thought his tongue to exist and he should have been grateful because it is coated in gluey film that tastes of sick, of laudanum and some other lingering mélange of medicines that he couldn’t possibly identify in his current state. He scrapes it against his teeth, grimacing and flexing his hand against the wrinkled bedsheets at his side.

“Good morning. How do you feel?”

The question is gentle and he can hear the smile in it but he can do nothing but groan in protest to it. He hisses when that wet chill returns and spreads over to his forehead, wiping at raw nerves. It makes his muscles contract and he desperately wishes he could go back to just a moment before, when he couldn’t move them at all in his welcome torpor. It feels biting when it moves down to his neck and a scratching sound that was meant to be a word claws out of his throat.

“Maybe it’s best you don’t speak. Your fever has only just broken.” He wants to argue, but he doesn’t need to when the chill retreats, replaced by something softer, dry to wipe the remaining trickles of moisture away.

It brings with it a relief and he just manages a sigh, just manages to turn his head to allow the care. It is diligent, loving in its slow strokes, and when his head is turned by dainty fingers and the shock of cold returns on his other cheek, he bears it with only a quick inhale. The warmth is quicker to return this time and another sigh escapes him.

The blankets that anchor him to the bed are adjusted over him. They are pulled up properly over his chest, patted and smoothed down, tucked at his sides. He shifts with it, sinking further into the bed, and he finally gathers the strength to force his eyes open.

The light stabs into his head and he has to squint against it to stop the pulsing at his temples. He blinks, half to adjust and half to clear the blear from his eyes, and he brings a heavy hand up to wipe the grit from them. When they are clear, the sting fading away, he finds himself in a familiar bedroom, lit only by the light that filters through sheer curtains.

Christine sits, haloed by that diffuse light. There is a smile that dimples her cheek, turns her ballet-pink lips up at the corners. Wisps of hair are falling from her pins, stray curls framing her face, and beneath heavy-lidded eyes, he detects the faintest hint of darkened colour. She is almost bedraggled, her shoulders slumped and a rag held loosely against her lap. But even so, she tilts her head, smile widening.

“Two days, before you try to ask,” she says, and now he can see the movement of her mouth to accompany her voice. There is more weight in his chest at the sight, but a grounding one, his head sinking deeper into the pillow. Two days? “You woke once or twice, never for long.”

“What…” Before he can try to rasp out any further words, she leans forward to squeeze his forearm, cutting him off. Her smile twists just slightly in exasperation, but doesn’t disappear.

“You caught a chill.” She trails her touch down his arm to his hand, where she wraps her fingers around his, giving another soft squeeze. He closes his eyes, returning the pressure as best he can, allowing the warmth to spread up his arm and into his chest. “I’ve told you not to go out in the rain so often. I ought to be angrier at you.”

Her words carry no heat, only a playful chiding, but he can hear the fatigue behind them. He frowns but she must have seen it because she hums, lifting his hand up. He feels lips against his knuckles, a smooth cheek being pressed to his palm.

“You won’t be leaving bed for a week, at least.” She says it with a warning promise as she presses his hand firmer to her cheek, as she nuzzles into it, kisses his palm. He shivers, and he isn’t sure if it is the minute remnants of his bygone fever or the action. Whichever it is, it makes his muscles go liquid.

When she is sure that he is comfortable, when his pillows have been fluffed and some water has washed the bitterness from his mouth, she sits on her stool, his hand pulled between both of hers. No more words are spoken as the morning light shifts to noon. They are instead relegated to a folk song, something Swedish and hushed, lilting and floating.

He settles into it, sighs between the verses and his suppressed coughing. He allows himself to go boneless, allows that curling voice to cocoon him as he drifts in and out between syllables. He lets his hand go limp in both of hers, so warm and doting as they run fingers over his sore knuckles.

Perhaps he has not quite met eternity, but when he slips back into that dreamless blackness, the glowing presence beside him feels blissful all the same.


	2. Stolen Breath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christine listens to her husband's breath in the night, and is afraid of what she hears. References to illness

There isn’t much sound below the opera house. Even the comings and goings above, the rehearsals and the bustling crowds carry no noise to the deep cellars, buffered too completely by the walls upon walls and floors upon floors. In the night, especially, when the music has faded to no more than soft hums and whispered goodnights, the silence is encompassing, staved off only by Christine’s heartbeat in her ears and the sound of her husband’s breathing beside her.

It is that breath that she now listens to, the tide of it pulling in deep before flowing out once more. She feels it against her jaw, the rise and fall of a narrow chest against her side and the occasional twitch of a willowy leg tangled in hers. His hand rests over her heart, fingers drumming now and again to some unheard melody that he will no doubt jump from bed in the morning to scribble down before the distractions of day wipe the notes from his mind.

All of these movements, so familiar now, ought to steady her, she knows. It ought to steady any young wife, she tells herself, ought to be evidence enough that the night will be a pleasant one, a restful one.

But she waits. She waits and she waits and—there it is. A hitch in his breath, a stillness, a sharp inhale and a shaking exhale before he shifts, a different angle but always closer to her, and it all evens out once more.

The waiting begins anew. Like when she was a child, she recalls, and her father would teach her to count the seconds between lightning and thunder to know how close the storm was. She counts, every breath, every change. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale—there it is again.

That stretch of limbo grows shorter every night, the dead silence longer, the gasps louder. Each morning, he awakes more haggard than the one before— _nothing to concern yourself with, my dear, restless dreams, nothing more._ He doesn’t realize that she knows, that she lies awake at night with dread coiling in her chest, all smooth-scaled and clawing at her ribs.

Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Not perfect, but calmer than it has been in a long while. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale… Exhale… She allows her eyes to drift properly shut, stroking her thumb along the back of his head, smoothing the thin strands of hair there. Inhale… Exhale… Inhale… She doesn’t remember the last time she slept a full night. Exhale… When they first married? A year ago, now. Inhale… It seems like so long ago. _Exhale…_

She waits.

And waits.

Her eyes snap open, a leaden weight plunging through her gut.

He isn’t moving.

She shoots up to sit and he falls away from her, limbs limp and unwieldy. She can feel her heartbeat in her mouth, closing the back of her throat as her hands go to his face, to the side of his throat, to his wrists, to his chest, too frenzied to absorb any of the information they might gather. Still he doesn’t move and her eyes flick from feature to feature, trying to find something in the dark to latch onto, some sign of _something_ , but all she finds is stillness, a slack jaw, his bony thinness seeming so much starker all of a sudden.

She shakes him, tears stinging her eyes as she mutters his name over and over, louder each time until she is practically shouting in her pleas, fingers digging into him through his nightshirt. _Wake up, wake up, Erik, please, WAKE UP—_

A gasp.

His chest heaves and he all but scrambles upright, glowing eyes bleary as he blinks once, twice in order to focus properly. He is panting, trying to catch the breath that his sleeping body had denied him. Her hand flies to her throat in an effort to quell the racing of her pulse, her own breaths trembling with a suppressed sob and her eyes shutting tight against the flow of tears that trails freely to her chin.

“Christine.” His voice is gluey and rough with sleep, silver tongue clumsy over the syllables. The sob escapes in a tangle with a huff of laughter. When he coughs, says her name again, she shakes her head, surging forward to cup his cheeks with a tender ferocity, opening her eyes just long enough to find his lips and crush her own to them.

She absorbs his grunt of surprise with a soft sweep of the lip and her hands scramble to his shoulders, down his arms to grab at his hovering hands and place them on her sides. She needs to feel the solidity of him and so she leans forward until their chests are flush. He needs no further urging, a gravelly groan tingling into the back of her throat as his hands glide along her back to clutch her tighter to him. The friction of his fingers kneading into her side anchors her to him, and when he parts her lips with his own pull, the fear is forgotten in lieu of the salt of his skin.

But not for long when she feels his breath coming in short puffs against her mouth between quiet pulls, gasps suppressed for her sake. She pulls away just as he takes her bottom lip between his teeth, her hands coming to his cheeks once more. His eyes flick across her features, chest rising and falling in a stormy rhythm.

“Erik—”

Her mouth is stayed when he threads those long fingers through her hair and pulls her to him again, swallowing up any concern she might have had and replacing them with a low-thunder rumble. Her fingers rake down his cheeks, his neck, until she is gripping into the collar of his nightshirt to pull him closer again. She hears how he forces his breathing to steady, hears the rattling from his lungs, but he doesn’t stop, even as she falls to her back against the downy pillows. She doesn’t miss the way he sucks in another breath, turning his attention to her neck.

The tears flow down into her hair and she stymies the trembling whimper for his sake as he mutters endearments, panting between words against her ear. She thinks, by the shaking of the thumb that wipes a tear away, that he knows.


	3. Promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik's future is suddenly very real, and the past even realer for it. References to pregnancy

A joke, he had thought. A poor one, unbefitting of her in its mocking, but it is far easier to believe in a sudden emergence of cruelty than it is to humour the potential reality of her words. It isn’t until his own words come out in sharp clippings, until she reels back with what had been mirthful blue eyes wide and a hand on her stomach that he is stricken with the truth of it and the chilling need to force every syllable back into his closing throat.

The apology comes too slow from too gluey a mouth, her eyes already rimming red before she turns to hide them. He says her name, but it comes out choked, high, edged on all sides with a cutting petrifaction that spreads to his limbs. It traps him when she whispers a goodnight, her voice feathery in its distance, and he can’t so much as reach out when she steps past him, head ducked down. The steps retreat toward the bedroom, and the door closes with a soft click infinitely more jarring than a slam.

The seconds tick. He is numb. The minutes pass. He can’t breathe. An hour chimes. Her then-happy words echo in his skull until they tangle into new ones altogether, angry and full of vitriol, vicious and full of truths. Hateful and insulting and not a single one wrong. His hand lifts of its own accord, fingertips pressing into bare face.

His heartbeat jumps and pounds at what he finds there, what he always finds there, and he had become so accustomed to it now, with her, almost a mark of acceptance for it that he finds in the way she kisses the gaunt and pallid ridges of him. But now it sears the pads of his fingers, now it hurts, every past slap of terror redoubling in cumulation in a single second against his cheek and the tears that track it.

_What have you done?_

He drifts without realizing it to the kitchen, grabs up without thinking a bottle of wine, steps out without looking to the foyer. The front door opens, early-spring wind biting into the bare skin of his forearms and neck, but he doesn’t bother with a scarf or a coat, doesn’t even bother with shoes, barely remains cognizant enough to close the door behind him as he steps out onto the balcony.

He tries to walk beyond the confines of their home, their land, far away from her and what they’ve built in this sun-filled year together, back to a cellar or cavern or some other deep and dark and damp place where he belongs, but he only makes it to the step before his knees buckle beneath him. He is forced to sit, wine bottle cradled in his hands.

_What have you done?_

The cork of the bottle comes free with a _pop_ , and he takes a mouthful that turns to grit on his tongue the second it passes over, but he doesn’t care. He swallows it down all the same, lets it sit heavy and sour in his turning stomach while he stares at the moonlit flagstones and the dark grass that grows in tufts between them. His hand lifts again, half-hopeful that there will be something different there to what there was a moment before.

It is the same. It is the same death’s head, unyielding and devoid of softness, not a shred of comfort to be gleaned from it, and he bows it forward, stares at his feet, flattens his hand over his sunken eyes, wet with salt. Images flash in the space between his temples of a child, rail-thin, trembling at mirrors for what he found there. Innocent, back then, but for the reality of his birth. In one of these rare occasions, he remembers the child with pity, an almost-love that cuts just an inch through the disgust.

In these moments of forced humanity, he doesn’t wish this face on a single soul.

_…pregnant, Erik. I’m pregnant, Erik. I’m pregnant, Erik. I’m…_

_Was Mother kind, before your birth?_

He chokes on his own sin, the comparison of crystal heart to dripping rancor, guilt gnawing at his throat with stained teeth the instant the thought passes through. Another mouthful of wine, a bitten-back sob as he scrapes fingernails against the back of his head and curls into himself. He dares in that bare second, dares to doubt his Christine and her aching abundance of love. He dares to picture hate in her eyes, dares to see lily-white hand raised high, dares to hear poison in her nightingale voice directed toward a helpless creature. How much would it pain her, to hear the thought and feel the doubts? She doesn’t, but the potential scuttles in his chest like beetles and self-loathing mixes with bile in his mouth. Another mouthful of wine.

He looks to the sky now and the swollen moon that drowns out the stars, but it is distorted in his vision for the tears. He curses himself for his past wishes, the ones he sent to the sky like burning paper up a chimney. A normal life, he wanted. A life like any other man. A wife, a family, a life that the sun could touch, and now he has it, now the world is cruel in its giving where it had been cruel in its taking. A reminder comes in his dread— _this isn’t a life meant for you, your family is cursed by your love._

His family. A tiny beginning of one, growing behind only two doors, so close, nestled comfortable and ignorant of its lot. It doesn’t know of its make-up, the warring sides of it that tell it to grow plump and cherubic, rangy and malformed. It doesn’t know, it doesn’t know, it doesn’t know, and he loves it, by God but he loves it with every thrumming muscle in his heart and he takes in another mouthful in hopes to drown the fear of every ticking second that passes by. His head cranes back to stare straight up, tears streaking back on his temples, before he closes his eyes and prays to every god that will listen.

_Let the child be beautiful, let the child be beautiful, let the child be beautiful._

The words repeat and redouble until they are all he hears in the depths of himself and he is left weeping, wailing at the cruelty of the curse he is spreading. _Let the child be beautiful._ The plea is painful in his head, pushing on all sides of it. _Let the child be beautiful._ Loud and violent in its desperation. _Let the child be beautiful._ Clinging to a vague and distant hope.

_Let the child not suffer._

His mind goes silent all at once, squawking birds frightened by the thunder, and his eyes open to the sky. The stars blink back at him, knowing of the tiny drop of something clear that plinks in the empty caverns of him. Something like slow revelation mixed with remembrance of hands on his cheeks, of lips on his lips, of forget-me-not eyes that don’t turn away from him, of suffering smoothed down and wrapped in lambish cotton. He sets the bottle down, presses his hands to the balcony step.

_Let the child not suffer._

The prayer turns inward. Purpose wraps around him, weighs on his shoulders in a way he has never felt, wonderful and dreadful at once, wearying and terrifying and hopeful.

_Let the child not suffer._

He stands, legs numb, and leaves the bottle where he placed it. He stares out into the garden, looks at the shy-budding bushes haloed silver before he turns. The door creaks, but quietly as he steps inside and into the cocoon of warmth, closes it behind him, pads on heavy feet to the bedroom.

It is dark inside but he doesn’t need the light, body trained to find the bed, led by the faint scent of lavender and soap. When he makes it to the edge, when his eyes adjust, he sees the outline of her underneath the eiderdown, the splay of blond curls over her pillow, her body turned away from him and to the lacy white curtains of the window on the other side. He feels as though he can hear her heartbeat, the calm and even rhythm of it, and in the center of it, he thinks he hears another, smaller and more fragile. Perhaps they are both his own in his ears.

He lifts the blankets, careful so as not to disturb her, and slips in fully clothed behind her. Even through his layers, even in his inches away, he feels the warmth that she has collected. He lays there, feels it, traces the curve of her neck with his eyes before he reaches forward and presses a hand to her shoulder.

She shifts, but only a tiny stir of a thing, even as he runs his hand down the length of her arm. He pulls closer to her, pressing to her back, and he feels her breathing now, the tiny vibration of a sleep-addled hum. His hand finds her waist, the slight dip in it beneath the lace and linen of her nightgown. He pinches the fabric, rolls it between thumb and forefinger, closes his eyes and tugs.

A little at a time to not wake her, bunching it up toward her hip, and she squirms in her sleep as though to help him. Fondness blooms wide in his throat, choking another sob before he presses his forehead to the back of her head, nuzzling into her hair and taking in a deep breath to steady himself.

His hand finally finds skin beneath her nightgown, the bare swell of her hip, painfully warm, solid and soft. He reels her in closer, hides himself in her neck and he finds himself trembling, holding himself still. The fear of breaking her is rough and insistent. His touch feels cursed.

A whisper of his name makes his body go liquid, the drape of a hand over his reducing him to dew. He hides deeper in her neck, kisses the skin there, begs for forgiveness without words—he can’t summon them—and she must grant it because she turns her head to his to rub her cheek to his temple. He can’t stop the sob now, but she hushes him, squeezes his hand, draws it along the cotton planes of her waist, her ribs, her belly.

She presses it flat there and a tremor wracks his body, his mouth going dry.

“I won’t let a soul bring them harm.”

Her voice is a hush but it surrounds him with the volume and force of her conviction, and he tries to echo her, but the sincerity squeezes his chest and all he can do is curl around her and nod, sweeping his thumb over her navel. He thinks, by the way she reaches back to smooth back the sparse wisps of his hair, that she understands.


	4. Moonlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A reupload of an old drabble that I took down for editing. Figured it was time to repost it. Pre-'Beneath a Moonless Sky'!

“Get out.”

Acid, vitriolic hiss, all scorched air that comes out through animal teeth, but she isn’t surprised by that so much as by the bare face that snarls back at her. Maskless, the bleached parchment skin of him glowing silver in the slanting moonlight through the ratty-curtained windows. She looks past him, to the bedroll that lays on the grime-thick floor with his meagre belongings—violin case, carpet bag, a single empty bottle of brandy. Base, no sheets of silk or cushions of velvet or organ of brass.

Spectre reduced to shade, a lingering memory more than a presence.

But when she faces him again, there is the infernal glow to his eyes, and she remembers that title, those whispers of _Phantom, the Phantom_ , the power in him even as it is reduced to the barest flicker. He is there, beneath the torn shells of silk and wool that hang haphazard on his frame, even if they have lost the poise and intimidating grace that they represented once upon a time.

“ _Get out._ ” Frustrated by her silence, a threat that isn’t a threat just yet, and she knows she must be doing well because he wouldn’t have warned her a second time if she wasn’t. She uses the knowledge to bore deep, to stare into the depths of those flaring eyes and take a step forward.

“You were supposed to be dead.”

He hides a wince, she can tell by the minute twitch of sharp cheek. She knows what he takes from the words, knows he grips to the first sliver of cold knife-edge, and she doesn’t correct his thought, not yet.

“Yes. I was.” _Get out._

“Then how?”

The silence stings. His posture is prey-animal, bristle and shrink, fire and fear. Pitiable in his state, she wants all of a sudden to comfort him, but lifting her hand is a mistake because he grabs her wrist, squeezes it to just the border of painful.

She grits her teeth but doesn’t back down.

“Does it matter? The how?” _Get out._ Every word laced with it, a command and a plea and a contradiction by the way his grip on her wrist loosens, by the way it all seems to snap to his awareness, like the creature part of him disappears and he sees their hands beside each other in earnest. Awe, as though it is the first time. Wonder in the tiny sweep of thumb over the heel of her hand.

When he lifts his eyes back to her, there is human in the compounding recognition of them, the same once candlelit and five stories deep. He didn’t believe she was here. How many times has he told her to leave before she came? How many times has he grabbed her wrist only to find air?

How many times has her voice told him that he was supposed to be dead?

Reverent, her name lifts from him, the venom gone, thick smoke in its place. He lets go of her wrist, but she only turns her hand into his, twines their fingers together, lets him see the contrast of them, looks at the contrast herself. Latent strength, in this hand that doesn’t quite hold hers in return, bloodstained and infinitely tender.

“Why are you here?” It is a quiet desperation that she recognizes, _Christine, I love you_. He repeats the question, and the sense of miracle in his voice at his being allowed to ask it prickles on the back of her neck.

“You were—They said you were dead.” He says nothing, reacts in no way to the catch of the words, only waits stone-still for her to find more of them. “I needed to see that you weren’t.”

“Why?” A breath of a thing that she doesn’t have an answer for. Why indeed? She brings his hand closer, kisses his knuckle to put the question from his mind, and it works because he doesn’t speak it again, only shudders like a freezing man and says her name once more.

It sounds something sweet, something weary in the dark water of his voice, something hopeful and hopeless at once, a prayer to a god he doesn’t believe in. A different way of hearing it, a tugging that compels her to lift her other hand to his gnarled, twisted cheek. Something mortal again, weak in the way he turns into it, corner of mouth to inside of wrist, not daring to press proper but as close as he can get. _Phantom, the Phantom_ , spectre to shade to man. Her name again, fluttering like paper wingbeats to her pulse, and it is her turn to shudder, to whisper.

“You never told me your name.” Does he have one? Angel, Don Juan, Phantom. He must have something real, but she questions the notion when his eyes grow even more distant, as though trying to call upon some long unsummoned memory. His mouth opens, closes, opens again.

“Erik.”

_Erik_. She tests it, tastes it, foreign and familiar all at once. Metallic, smooth with a keen point, like licking up the flat of a knife to the tip. It suits him almost too well, but she doesn’t say as much, only says the name again, a little more surely. A hard breath leaves him, puffing over her skin, and there is a tremor to the hand that is still lifted between them, interlocked with hers.

It nearly stops her heart, the way he draws closer, freezing man seeking warmth and she is happy to give it, her own skin feverish with the hand that eclipses hers to press it closer to the birth-ruin of his face. A sigh and a nuzzle, desperate bid for proximity and this she gives too in a sweep of thumb beneath the ridge of his cheekbone, in her own inching forward. Perhaps the darkness of the moon stealing into half-hiding is what fully mellows the storm of his bearing, perhaps it is the echo of shared breath between them, but when they close the distance, chest-to-chest, his body feels no more unyielding than a dissipating cirrus.

“Why?” he asks again, more rumble in his chest than word. “Why are you here?”

“I had to know,” she replies, more mist from her throat than statement.

“Why?” She says his name again, tests it again, _stop asking_ , but though he trembles, he asks her again, bows his head deeper into her palm. She untwines her hand from his, feels the silent protest in his body before she cups his other cheek.

“Stop asking,” aloud this time, and before he can defy her, she stops his mouth with her own.

A reflection of a time before, candlelit and five cellars deep, but a hazy one, heartbeat pounding steady in lack of thought rather than tripping in a whirring too many. Grip of fingers, claws, shock and question but a different kind in the asper dim. She can taste the new ‘why’ mingling with the hours’-old brandy on his lips, says nothing, only pulls away to see glassy eyes wide, half-bloated lips parted without a single sign of breath.

And like then, she pulls him in a second time, like then, doesn’t know _why_. Unlike then, arms wind to surround her, quaking rigid. Unlike then, the mouth beneath hers presses back.

The moon disappears.


	5. Absolution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Christine works to fulfill a promise, she doesn't expect to find a ghost. Major character death.

_Erik is dead._

That is what the paper said, in that bold black print that made the tea in Christine’s mouth turn to sand in her throat. That is what had her staring, blank and stuck and unable to so much as twitch a muscle. That is what had the ring on her finger, that plain gold band, burning a brand into her skin before she rose so quickly that she forgot to put the teacup back on the table before letting go of it. She had ignored the shards of what had once been fine crockery, dashing out the doors with only a knotted weight in her chest and that gold ring to burden her.

_Erik is dead._

The words keep ringing in her head in a voice that isn’t her own, over and over and over again, echoing and overlapping until they are completely unrecognizable. She knows she saw them, she knows that they were there in front of her, unmistakable on the page, the letters burnt into her retinas. She didn’t imagine them, they were _there_.

Yet here she stands, that gold ring pressed so tightly into her palm that it forces an indent into her skin as she stares into the eyes that match it, as she stands mere feet away from a barely-breathing echo. He seems to skirt the line he so often did, that tiny sliver between man and shadow that only he could toe. Now, the shadows appear to call his bluff, no longer light and receptive to his command but weighing on him like a rain-soaked coat.

She hears no sound in the dim gas-lit drawing room save for those weak breaths and the ticking of a clock that he has inexplicably kept wound. Then, the sound of his name on her tongue, though she doesn’t remember willing herself to speak it. He seems to grow heavier for the sound of it, head sagging forward, gaunt and unmasked face downturned as though he is unwilling, unable to look at her.

“I… had expected, by now… that I would be…”

His voice is a distorted facsimile of what it once was, a hoarse, barely audible scrape. A Stradivarius with an unrosined bow. Her hand tightens and her fingernails join the ring in pushing into the flesh of her palm. When she speaks again, her own voice shakes.

“You… You weren’t planning on…?” She doesn’t realize how much the answer matters until he shakes his head no and a wash of relief floods over her in a sigh.

The relief is short-lived when, with a sudden grunt and a gripping over his heart, he falls hard to one knee, one hand bracing him against the rug. She is in front of him in an instant, grabbing his shoulder as he takes in a laboured breath. She drops the ring, reaching to him, but he shakes his head, removing the hand from his chest to stop her.

“ _Christine_ …” Rough, hoarse, pained. He lifts his eyes to her, that cat’s-eye glow a low sheen in the darkness. “Why did you come?” The question lances her to the core and she shakes her head, finishing her reach forward to pull the still-floating hand into both of hers. He makes no protest, muscles going slack as he shifts with effort to be on both knees. She caresses a thumb over his marble-carved knuckles.

“I promised you.” She only removes one of her hands from him, just to pluck up the ring from the floor. She lifts it to show him, as though she needs to remind him of that day—so long ago, it feels like. A lifetime in three weeks. He looks at the offending band, back up to her eyes, then to the ring again before he closes his eyes once more. She can hear the suppressed rumble in his chest, can feel him tensing in the muscles of his hand as his fingers tighten around hers unbidden and hers tighten back. The moment fades, but her hand stays.

“Sweet, honest, pitying woman,” he murmurs. “Why would you make a promise to a fading devil?” She doesn’t respond, instead squeezing his hand again, trying her best to warm it—cold, even colder than she remembers. She can feel his heartbeat with her fingertips at his wrist, frail and quick, like hummingbird beats.

All at once it is far _too_ quick, erratic and rhythmless, and his hand closes like a talon over hers, almost painful as his other comes up to claw at his chest. He gasps, great wheezing breaths as he wavers in place, and before she can so much as yell, he falls to his side. She scrambles closer, the ring forgotten once more, a buzzing in her ears blocking out the sound of the clock as she pulls her hand out of his to lift his head into her lap, to press fingers to the side of his neck.

His heartbeat begins to steady again, his breaths slowing, but it does little to lessen the knots tying tighter in her gut. With light, quivering fingers, she smooths the sparse hair of his temple back. It sticks to the film of sweat that lays on his skin, but she doesn’t pull away, the motion made to comfort herself as much as to comfort him.

She hears, above the ringing in her ears, a rough whisper, but she can’t make out the words, even as he turns in her lap to face her. She can see the millimeter’s line of gold looking up at her, and her mouth goes dry to see tears streaking down into her skirt, to see the barest tremble to his lips as he speaks.

“You should leave me,” he says, even as he pulls his hand from his chest to twist fingers into her dress. “Don’t watch me die, Christine.” The crack in her heart is near audible, tears stinging her eyes and burning her cheeks. She shakes her head, pressing her hand firm to the side of his head.

“I won’t leave you,” she whispers, trying harder to will his skin to warm beneath hers. It feels like paper, thin and damp and easy to tear under her thumb, but she sweeps it along his cheekbone all the same. “Not like this.” He lets out a sound not unlike a sob, but strained, and his hand shakes for the force with which he clutches the fabric of her dress. He tugs on it as though trying to pull her closer, so she lifts his head to cradle him in her arms, up to her chest.

“Oh, Christine…” Her name squeezes from him as though his throat is closing, as though the shadows that had been on his shoulders are now choking him. “Forgive me…” The plea is spoken like a prayer of supplication, his hold on her dress desperate, as though she is the rosary to which he must cling. She hushes him softly, leaning down closer to him, but he doesn’t obey, the words coming again and again in a feverish muttering.

When she whispers his name, he stops, hand leaving her dress to anchor itself on her upper arm. He tries to shift in her arms but she holds him still, his body feeble and pliant. Still he lifts his head, almost face to face with her.

In those amber eyes, she sees the cumulation of every sin that festers in his skull. He is begging her, clawing for absolution, not in the eyes of God but in hers. That frigid hand is at the back of her neck now, chilling her blood, and he bows his head.

“Please…” A barely-there breath that makes her own come out slow. “Forgive me…”

She can do nothing but nod, but hold him closer, but cup his cheek and bid him to look back at her. Another whisper of his name, another strained breath and their eyes lock. She had once been so afraid to look into those eyes, unable to meet them, but she does now, doesn’t shrink away. Her voice finally comes back to her.

“I already have…”

She pulls him closer until his weight rests against her chest and he sinks into her. His hand doesn’t leave the back of her neck, but she welcomes it, welcomes the feeling of his thumb tracing through the tiny curls at her hairline. He whispers her name once more and she hums to tell him that she hears him, unable to speak any further.

“I love you…”

She can’t stop the sob at this, cracked and shaking her shoulders. He squeezes the back of her neck and their eyes lock again, bleary for the tears that refuse to stop. His head tips upward toward hers and hers down toward him, and she leans in closer, even as her tears drip down to his cheeks.

She doesn’t know if it is he who pulls her down or she who pulls him up, but the distance closes between them until their lips meet. A soft pressure, barely there but powerful as it wraps tight around her chest and squeezes until she thinks she can’t breathe. It lingers, a beat longer than forgiveness, before his strength gives out and he goes limp in her arms.

They cry. They cry quietly, the ticking clock drowning out their stifled sobs as she holds him to her chest, as she balls fists into his shirt with each of his spasms and each second that he grows more silent, as she rocks him back and forth with his head held over her heart.

She doesn’t know how long she sits, legs going numb beneath her, but by the time she slips the ring to his too-cold finger, the clock has stopped its ticking.


	6. Wedding Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a tumblr trope mash-up prompt: 'accidentally married' and 'in vino veritas'.

He had asked because his ears were warm and the room was swimming at the edges of his vision and she looked particularly stunning with cheeks pinkened rosy by the claret. He had asked because the question burned his tongue every time she followed him here and it turned liquid, insidiously slippery with the third glass, and he _knew_ her to be sitting still but every little movement looked like dance to him. He had asked and it took the curious tilt of her head to realize he had done it.

He stumbled over himself—curse his clumsy tongue—to take it back, but before he could manage more than single, lolling syllables, she responded with a considering hum.

“It would be nice, I think.”

Surely he didn’t hear her correctly. _Nice_ was not what he might call an appropriate adjective— _splendid, breathtaking, transcendent_ from him, but _nice_ was remarkably generous from her side of things, considering the implications. But she sipped at her wine while he questioned his sanity, seemed to mull it over, and gave a firm, decisive nod.

“Yes. I would like that.”

They weren’t quite sure where the rings came from, when they awoke to matching bands of gold adorning their fingers in the morning. He, for his part, wasn’t quite sure he wasn’t still drunk, to see her groggy and sandy-eyed on the other side of the Louis-Philippe bed, still fully clothed—he too, his mask still plastered to his face but askew and laced with day-old sweat. Perhaps it was that suspicion that kept him from jolting through the ceiling upon her growing look of realization.

“Erik.” A little bit hoarse, a little bit breathless. She looked to his face, the ring, his face again. “Have we just eloped?” His throat would have gone drier, were it capable.

“I suppose we have.”

He nearly bolted at the laughter, but was stilled by a hand on his mask and giggling lips against his own.


End file.
